Fifty years of electron waves

The crucial experiments carried out by Clinton Davisson in America and by George Thomson in England, which were published in 1927, designed to confirm the wave nature of the electron and the de Broglie formula, are outlined. The influence of their work has been felt in many ways since then but perhaps the main impact is in the field of electron diffraction with high-energy electrons used so extensively in electron microscopy. (U.K.)